Just another WordPress.com site

Main menu

Monthly Archives: March 2016

With Republican zealots plotting against him, can the will of the People save Donald Trump from political crucifixion?

Not to compare The Donald to Jesus Christ as a person, but to compare his current political circumstances to the persecution and historical political circumstances of Jesus’ in order to illuminate what the American political establishment is doing and why.

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump – who is already a very established leader in the business world – is trying to assert himself as the political leader of the United States. But he hasn’t paid his dues nor suffered countless election defeats and other indignities of a tried and true politician. He hasn’t played the game from the other side of the fence. Although a very successful businessman, Trump is anything but a traditional political leader, yet. Hence his popularity.

About this time nearly 2,000 years ago, Christ attempted to assert his claim to the three heads of influence: the position of High Priest in the strict Jewish Essene sect to which he belonged; the title of King of the Jews, which was his bloodline, but to which his own brother James claimed righteously because he asserted that Jesus was not the legitimate heir; and the leader of the political group called The Twelve Disciples, which laid influence on the governance of the Jewish people through religion and politics.

To say the very least, Jesus was misunderstood. He had risen in the religious ranks through determination and deeds. His following was popular and growing, which worried the establishment priests.

Jesus wanted all to be able to worship God in the temple; the sick, the lame, the Gentiles and women, not just those deemed acceptable by the crony religious leadership of the day.

Jesus had stepped out of his role as simply future King of the Jews of the David line, and wanted to unite the forces of society from a single point of power.

Donald Trump, successor to his family fortune, protestant Christian, and now political wannabe, is attempting the same thing and is getting the same results from the political establishment and religious left that Jesus received from the ruling Essene priests, Herod (King of the Jews who espoused peace and cooperation with the establishment government from Rome), and Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea.

How dare he presume rights to ultimate power!

What chutzpah!

But indeed, the opponents of Trump are getting more and more perturbed as he appears to step closer and closer to the ultimate position of power in the world, that of Presidency of the United States.

The most recent claim, by The Economist, that a Trump presidency would be a “top ten global threat,” is absurd. But such statements gain media attention like flies on dung.

Every new story about how Trump couldn’t possibly be president or shouldn’t be president takes on curiouser and curiouser rationale.

The Economist piece claims his presidency would encourage terrorist recruitment, and send global markets to the basement. These claims are erroneous at best and evil propaganda at worst.

Why has Mitt Romney turned into the Republican establishment pit bull, espousing the type of vitriol and hyperbole against Trump that we never saw when he ran against President Obama?

They have their collective panties in a bunch because they see with Trump an end to their political influence and standing.

A Trump victory would make them all irrelevant, and then beholden to Trump for positions in the new administration and beyond. Trump would become the face of the Republican Party and its defacto leader.

A President Trump would act fast and decisively to melt away the fat of unnecessary government. Depending on whom he chooses to join him in his administration – and they are already lining up – he would find it more or less difficult getting things through a majority Republican Congress.

His biggest is with the conservatives, just as Jesus’ biggest hurdle was members of his own sect who were zealots (Simon Magus and Judas Iscariot). Jesus the pacifist does not appear to share that trait with Trump, but that has yet to be revealed, as Trump’s political record has not yet been written.

Remember, even though Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire,” and told Gorbachev to “tear down [the Berlin] wall,” he actually only invaded one country, Grenada. Hardly the hawkish neocolonialist his detractors wanted to make him out to be.

Call it bluster, call it bullying, what Trump says has a purpose. He is setting the stage for negotiations with influential powers around the globe and domestically.

The question is which power will prevail, the power of contempt and rhetoric of the Republican establishment, or the power of the People to elect the candidate of their choice? More and more it looks like it will be The Coiffed One.

Will the persecution of Donald Trump lead to his political crucifixion at a brokered convention? Or will the passion of Donald Trump reveal a new beginning for America? It may just come down to the will of the masses.

In Mark 15:15, wanting to please the crowd, Pilate released Barabbas, a convicted murderer, instead of sparing Jesus from the cross. If the pleasure of the crowd is with Trump, will the establishment powers let the People have their day?